


Free to Fly Away

by orphan_account



Category: The Turnaway Girls - Hayley Chewins
Genre: All Birds Fly Away Eventually, Bird Best Friends, Bittersweet, Delphernia loves her birds, Gen, Post-Canon, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:00:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22606651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Faced with loneliness and abandonment, Delphernia Undersea sings a soul to life one last time.
Relationships: Delphernia Undersea & Bly Harpermall, Delphernia Undersea & Mother Nine (mentioned), Delphernia Undersea & Sveglia Emm (mentioned), Delphernia Undersea & The Cloisterwings





	Free to Fly Away

**Author's Note:**

> This came out way sadder than I had planned, oops!  
> I hope you guys like it though! <3

Sometimes, even the sky was too high for her to reach.

That was the lesson she learned, the day she discovered she could sing souls for the second time.

It had been five months since she had freed her mother, as well as herself, but she still sang every day. She sang her heart out, sang about her happiness and family, and every day nothing happened.

Nothing. No golden cloisterwings, no birds at all, not even a single stand of her golden light thread.

As three months turned to four, and four to five, the winter season set in, and her cloisterwings, her  _ real  _ cloisterwings, flew away, leaving her alone, with the rocks, the sea, and her family.

Her days, which used to be filled with the noise and rustle of wings turned quiet with the absence if her loyal birds, and her life, bursting with people who loved her, felt as quiet and absent as her closest friends.

She had taken to sitting outside by the ocean, her twin brother seated on a bench nearby, fashioning another creature out of stone.

He sculpted mostly birds now, thinking of Nightfall and their brief life, but was known to create a version of everything that moved, including people.

She missed her birds. Sometimes she wished that they were still here with her, had never left, and felt guilty about that moments later.

They had spent generations locked away, not even allowed to see the light of day, much less fly. And now that they could, she was jealous that they chose to do it. They would choose to leave her. All of them.

As she watched a large wave crash against the rocks below, Delphernia began to sing. It started as a low hum, but eventually grew louder echoing the ocean she had once feared. As she sang her mind kept coming back to the birds, her birds, who had left her all alone, unable to go with them. She sang of her imprisonment, being locked up in the cloister, with only the birds for company. She sang about the burnt tree, the one she had spent so many hours with, singing. She sang about the day she first wove a soul, and the day she wove her last. But most of all, more than any of this, she sang about her bride flying away, leaving her.

She sang from the bottom of her heart, she sang the song in her soul, and as she reached her highest note she felt something shift in her, and watched as a thin strand of light appeared, flickering in and out, as if it could disappear at any moment. 

She worked slowly, weaving another cloisterwing, certain that this would be her last. Her final bird.

As she knotted off the last strand, Bly was suddenly at her side, holding up a body for her last creation.

It was a cloisterwing, larger than average, but not as large as Nightfall, with a crown of feathers above it's head, something that the other birds lacked.

Delphernia took a deep breath and let her bird go, smiling as it settled into it's new body.

She held the baby bird up to her face as it began to stir, it's eyes opening to meet hers.

“ _ Please don't leave me, _ ” she whispered.

“ _ I don't know what I would do if I lost you for good. _ ”

The little bird looked at her, it's newly made eyes staring deep into her soul, as the stone Sea-Singer's did for her many times over.

In those eyes it told her it understood. She was alone without her birds, she didn't know what she was. But the bird told her something in return. It told her of the air, and the feel of it under its wings. It told her of the clouds, and how they felt, like a warm spring rain. It told her of these things, and it told her of the sky and she knew then that it would leave her too. She knew it would leave her and she understood why, for she would also do anything, everything, to fly.

All her life she had dreamed of the sky, and it was right there, right above. She would never be able to get there, to finish her journey, but they could, and she couldn't keep them from that. She wasn't like that. She wasn't like Mother Nine.

So so smiled through her tears and let the bird go, it's name whispered on her tongue, a song in itself. 

_ Finale. _

**Author's Note:**

> The birds aren't gone, I promise!  
> Delphernia just doesn't know about migration.


End file.
